Four years ago, ACT IN GAMES demanded us to show our true feelings in the game Feelinks. Beginning with a short statement of an everyday situation, each player had to select an emotion that he felt towards the situation from a choice of eight different emotion cards, and guess what emotion his or her partner player had chosen. All right guesses were counted as victory points and the next round with a new statement started.

Feelinks was very successful as an educational game, and was played in a lot of Kindergarten and primary schools. But the simple concept also worked for families and between friends. The better you knew your fellow players, the more successful you were. And of course, you also learned something about the other players. Three different set of situation cards ensured that the game worked with the different player groups. To understand this, here are typical situations for the different groups:

School: A grown-up calls a student with bad grades a moron.

Family: You can exchange your parents with your best friend’s.

Friends: Your son steals money from you to help a friend in need.

Click on image to enlarge!

Typical emotions were for example: sadness, wonder, anger, joy and contempt. The game worked well with children, although the partner concept (each round you got a new partner, and with uneven player number there was always a group of 3 left) was a little bit inconvenient. I also remember some problems with similar emotions that were hard to distinguish by the one or other player. But the great illustrations of the emotion on extra large emotion cards compensated for this minor weaknesses.

However, the friends version was a little bit too brave in my opinion. I mean when I play a game, I want to have fun. It is nice to learn something about my fellow players, but in the end I am not really interested if XY feels excited when her father invites her to go cycling together. And I am also not amused when I guessed wrong and my partner had chosen right the contrary emotion to that situation. That’s why Feelinks was always an educational game for me to play with children.

A long foreword to come to the the version of the game that definitely overcomes my point of criticism of the original game. Feelinks - Revelations is no longer a children or family game. In fact, the recommended age for playing the game is 16+. The reason for that is that the new situations have a lot of explicit lyrics and a lot of sexuality. For example you could be asked how you feel, if your partner asks you to stop by the roadside to make love in the car. Not all situations are like this, e.g. another situation is that your partner suggests moving to a new home.

Click on image to enlarge!

But in Feelinks - Revelations the situation are all much more intimate, without being offending. Nobody has to be ashamed, but you should be liberal to different opinions and approaches to life. Often you think about what your fellow player might think about you, when you show them your emotion, but be assured: there is seldom a situation that is truly disgraceful, and of course you can always skip a situation if you prefer it.

I personally like the new variant a lot, because in comparison to the base game, there are more situations that you can laugh about. More precise: first you laugh after you hear the unusual or awkward situation, and then another time when everyone shows their true emotions.

But Feelinks - Revelations not only features new situation and emotion cards. Vincent Bildault also changed slightly the rules. There are no longer partner cards, but instead you roll dice after everyone has chosen their emotion. Depending on the number of players, the dice indicate one or two emotions for the round. Then each player has to estimate how many players have chosen the motions indicated by the die. The correct bets allow the group to advance a pawn on an emotion track that tells us how good we know our fellow players at the end of the game.

Feelinks - Revelations is a nice alteration of the base game for the grown-ups. With the right group of players I am pretty sure that you will have a lot fun. For those who are looking for games to play with children however, you better take the original game. Although the situations are not that funny, it is nevertheless an entertaining game. Only the problem with similar or inappropriate emotions to a given situation remains the same in both variants. That’s why I often discard an emotion and exchange it with a new one. With no one as witness, no problem at all....